First Try

Came across GD only lately, so only the latest weeks of our first grow will be documented here. We are growing two Northern Lights Automatic from Sensiseeds and a White Widow Automatic from an unknown breeder (was a free one). Tent size is 60x120 cm^2, lights are five Sanlight s2w. There are also 5 plants from bag seeds in the tent. Just as an experiment. Soil is a mixture of standard soil from discounter and compost from our garden. We do not want to use any nutrients or fertilizers; this is for experienced masters only.

Up to now we did not have any problems. In week 6 or 7 NL#2 got a little lemon coloured leaves which was caused by the lights being too close. Raised lights a little bit and two days later everything was fine again. We harvested some smaller buds from the White Widow. Turned out to be 6 grams dried.

No problems at all. Smell is increasing, buds feel very sticky. Our goal with this grow was to get a harvest of 120g. Our daily need of medicine is about 0.3 g, so this would be enough for one whole year.

Biggest problem most of the time was the heat. Was a huge heatwave all over Europe with temperatures approaching 40°C. We succeeded keeping temperatures in the tent at a maximum of 30°C at all times. Mostly it was around 29°C. Plants did not give us any headaches. We harvested the two main buds of the White Widow this week. Was 11g dry after one week.

This week Northern Lights #1 was harvested. She was a little bit smaller reaching only 65cm. Currently drying. Vaping the buds already harvested from the White Widow is very pleasant. Uplifting and makes us happy. Great medicine for our needs. Smell and taste is not very spectacular, but this is to be expected as it has not yet been cured at all. Currently in jars at 62% RH.

This week the main bud and the three largest side branches of NL#2 and the five biggest branches from the White Widow have been harvested. Currently drying. NL#1 is already dry. Due to the smell we had to dry in the same room where the tent is, so temperatures have been too high (around 28°C) resulting in a very fast drying (only one week). Hope it will not affect smell and taste too negatively. First vape test in about two weeks. Currently in the jar at 61% RH. Update of week 14: I found the buds already in jars to be a little bit overdried. They have been dried for only 5 or 6 days, but temperature was too high. Put some Boveda packs in. Also first part of WW and NL#2 in jars now. Very happy with the yield so far. We have reached 133g by now. We might even get another 40 to 50g from the bottom halves of the two ladies. Only thing that really puzzles me: Trichomes will not turn amber at all. We are at day 96 now but so far I could not see a single amber one. Neither from the WW nor from the NL#2. They seem to be 100% cloudy, though. With NL#1 things were easy: We harvested her with 5% amber. Ok, we will see... Also provided some photos with growlights turned off, but they do not look that much better. But I am a lousy photographer anyway :) Serious vape report not yet possible; they have not been cured long enough.

Added photos from the scale. 55g plus 2g samples.

Still waiting for trichomes to turn amber. I bought some loupe, but cannot really make use of it due to the state of my eyes. Taking photos with the smartphone and checking on the PC is still what works best for me. And it does work as I finally was able to spot a few amber trichomes on the White Widow. But not really many of them. The Northern Lights seems to still need some more time. I think the partial harvest might have been premature. On the other hand this will allow us to compare the effects of early harvest versus the ones of a late harvest for the very same plant which is great as the whole point of this grow was to get some feeling and gain experience which is why we kept it as simple as possible (no training, no fertilizers). Seems the White Widow still has some days to go and the Northern Lights one or two more weeks. They are at day 100 and 102 now.

Week 16 and they simply do not want to finish. In fact they are growing new little flowers and I see fresh white pistils everywhere. Still almost no amber trichomes. But it is ok, they can get all the time they want. I can wait. I can think. I can fast. Meanwhile I expect the time difference between early and late harvest to exceed 4 weeks. Will become an interesting comparison!

Very slowly some trichomes are turning amber. But it is still just about 10%. Instead they are growing more and more new pistils. Buds are getting harder on the NL as well now. The buds of the WW literally are hard as rocks meanwhile. This will probably be their last week now. I expect to do the final harvest in around a week from now.

These are the last pictures of the plants, they will get chopped tomorrow. It is incredible: Most of the trichomes are still cloudy, only very little amber. The buds had an impressive development in the last weeks. They have filled up even more and have reached maximum density. Literally hard as rocks. I cannot wait to test the end result and compare the effect to the first part of the harvest that has happened more than 4 weeks ago. Update: Harvested today in the morning. Again yield is bigger than expected. I only did weigh the two biggest branches and they had 32 and 26 grams wet. So I am confident the final harvest will be more than another 50 gram dry total. Now we will grow the bagseed plants ready that were also in the tent. We got those seeds from an older woman who was growing her own medicine for at least 20 years. We do not know anything about them and do not expect much. They have germinated somewhen in April. We can only be positively surprised. More detailed reports will come later after dry.

This is crazy, we yielded yet another 56 gram from that plant. Together with the 43 gram already harvested four weeks ago, this makes up for a total of 99 grams. We vaped some from the earlier harvest after 4 weeks cure and smell, taste and effect have improved drastically. I knew that cure is important, but I would not have expected such a significant effect. I will update this report in about 3 weeks when the late harvest is ready to vape.

And another positive surprise: 57 gram of late harvest, so together with the harvest from 4 weeks ago this makes up for a total of 91 grams. My guessing is totally off: I would have expected the Northern Lights to give about double the harvest of the White Widow, but it was more or less the same for both of them. And giving them more time has made a drastic difference: While the buds looked like a similar size they were so much more heavy and dense. They apparently contained much less water because they lost only about 65% of weight while with the first part of the harvest it was more than 70%. And they are definitely dry; in fact it seems we even overdried them, hygrometer is showing only 51% humidity. Again I will update in about 3 weeks for this final part of the harvest.

These plants are just an experiment. They are already about half a year old and spent their life in the tent with the breeder plants because we had the space. I hope to get about 15 gram per plant, so we reach the magic mark of 1 gram per watt. We did not expect much from them, but they are growing much better than expected. Unfortunately pots are way too small, but it is too late to transplant. So they need to get water twice per day. And we need to add some fertilizer.

Flowers are slowly developing. Very slowly. They are stinking like crazy. Cannot wait for the final result of these unknown plants...

Not much progress to see. Many of the lower leaves are wilting, but the flowers seem to pack up. Smell is incredibly strong from those tiny plants. I expect they will still need another four weeks or so. Harvested two of the plants yesterday. Lots of wilted leaves. Buds are quite small but very dense and have a great skunky smell. The next few days the remaining three plants will be chopped as well. I'm not trying to guess the yield as it will be off anyway, so waiting for the final surprise.

Just a final update on the harvest from the 5 unknown plants. We did not weigh it but when comparing to the yield from the three breeder genetics, I'm sure it is at least another 150g. The buds are very tiny and the end result contains quite some leaf material, but smell, taste and effect are surprisingly good. Much better than expected. And this is after only 10 days of curing. So total yield from our first grow was about 400g. If we would have grown one or two additional breeder genetics instead of those five "street" plants, we certainly also would have passed the 1g/W mark. I'm very, very happy! Next grow definitely will be in winter. It is so much easier to deal with cold temperatures than with heat. Unfortunately we do not have any compost left 😞